Accidents in the Field, and the start of a Fledgling Democracy
As seen through the eyes of Arben Braha, Albania’s 1st EOD Tech & HMA Program Founder
My wife, Rudina, and I met when we were very young. She grew up in a military family and she understood the life, the early calls, the long absences, the quiet rules we follow to keep each other whole. We made a promise that turned out to be stronger than the years. We formed a team, when I was weak, she covered, when she was tired, I carried, we drew red lines, and we kept them. That is marriage for me, a perfect loving unit.
In early nineties the air changed. You could not see it, but you could feel it in the way people talked close to your ear. With the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, the Communist Bloc was already melting throughout Eastern Europe like ice in spring, the regime in Albania hoped to last longer. It was only an illusion as it did not consider the desire for freedom that had already seized the entire Albanian people and their youth. The fatal hour of the communist regime in Tirana fell on July 2, 1990, when several thousand people, mostly young, attacked the German embassy (as well as other western diplomatic headquarters), lodged inside and sought political asylum. This was the final blow to a shaky regime which tried to pretend it could keep running on old fuel. It could not.
I stayed in the army, and my work moved with the times in small steps. They sent me to the Tropaga region with an engineer platoon, still building, still moving earth. Rudina and I were building a life at the same time. With some help from her father, I moved to another engineer unit that worked on bridges. In 1994 I finally managed to transfer back to Kukes, my home region. It was strange how hard that was, the system loved to separate people from their roots because it made them easier to control.
In the same year we married and our son, Lindi, was born. We lived with my parents in a small house, one bedroom and a little bathroom, four adults and a baby in a space that felt like a pocket. My brother, Edmond, was getting married and needed the room, so we found our own place to rent. The salary was small, and the work was heavy. I rose up the ranks; I tried to be a good officer in a structure that was learning to be honest.
Communism ended, but the habit of listening did not die. In the old days they could hear you in your hotel room in Tirana through wires that ran to a secret room. They could hear you through a small hole in the wall if the neighbor had given them a key. They could make a picture tell a lie with a pair of scissors and a brush. After the fall of communism some of the same hands learned to use new machines, and a phone could be a microphone even when it was quiet. I learned to take the battery out if I wanted a private thought. In the ministry I felt eyes and ears on me. After an argument with a general and his staff who did not want to hear bad news about the Physical Security and Stockpile Management (PSSM) depots, tunnels and safety protocols, they came to me with a warning, saying that they had heard I was saying bad things about the regime. I asked, who told you? They simply said, we know, we know.
The country shook itself apart in 1997 when the government corruption and pyramid schemes collapsed. People lost their money and then they lost their patience. They broke into barracks, took weapons, and the army stood in the doorways trying not to shoot at its own people. Some commanders, afraid of looters and afraid of blame, ordered mines to be laid around ammunition depots and tunnels. It was a bad decision dressed up as a quick solution, and we paid for it with blood. The accidents began, dogs and boys and then men stepped on the wrong spot and the earth answered. Those mines were meant to protect stockpiles for a short time, but time moves differently in a panic, and the landmine location maps were never made or were thrown away, and the danger remained for years. I will never forgive that mistake.
Accidents kept finding us because those depots had been mined in panic. One day we were called to a unit attached to an artillery battalion after a dog set off a device near the mouth of a tunnel. The smell of the animal was already settling on the stones. Major Ramazan Leka went forward to try to pull the body clear and another mine exploded. The blast took his foot and threw him to the ground.
The battalion chief of staff and I ran to help. He saw the pool of dark blood and collapsed in shock. He was a heavy man, so I slid my hands under his shoulders and dragged him back a few meters so he would not become another casualty, then went to the major. The bleeding from his leg was fast. I clamped it and made a tourniquet, not yet seeing the two small shrapnel wounds in his neck. We lifted him onto the bed of the Chevy. I climbed in with him while the driver pulled out onto the road.
The floor was filling with blood and the driver kept looking back, pale and distracted. I told him, eyes forward, drive, do not turn your head, if you look again, I will put a bullet in you. Sometimes fear needs hard words to keep it in check. He stared at the road and we raced to the hospital. It was then that I found the wounds in the major’s neck and pressed my fingers to them, talking to him so he would not slip away. At the steps I lifted him and carried him to surgery. Only then did I see myself; my camouflage soaked through with his blood.
We waited in the corridor with our chests still heaving. After forty minutes a doctor came out and asked who brought him. I said I did. He took my hand and said, you saved him, five more minutes and he was gone. That is one of the best feelings a man can carry. The division commander arrived, but I could not speak to him. It had been his idea to mine those depots and tunnels. He saw my face and said nothing.
I walked home from the hospital to the apartment we were renting. Rudina opened the door and asked why I was back so early. I said I only wanted a shower. The camouflage hid the stains, but when the hot water ran over me the blood poured off. Rudina opened the bathroom door to ask me something, saw the red, and collapsed. I caught her and said, it is not my blood, I am safe, it belongs to our friend, and he is alive. It took an hour to scrub it all away.
Later we sent Major Leka to Slovenia for treatment and a prosthesis. Every year he calls me. He never forgets. Neither do I.
In those days after the fall, my cousin Tony came home in an American uniform, he brought a digital camera, he laughed like a man who had learned to breathe in a different way. He gave me a set of US camouflage, and I wore it in Albania with our insignia sewn on, and I felt how clothes could carry a soldier. Later in Tirana he and I met some American Marines in a park, and we said hello and bought each other beer, and they invited us to a Ball inside their compound. It was like walking into another country, people shouting and singing and dancing without fear. I rode my bicycle home after midnight and was getting ready for bed then blue flashing lights came down my street and stopped outside my building. My heart jumped until I saw it was the marines and my cousin in their car, laughing and calling me out to come back for more drinks. They scared poor Rudina half to death at the door. We went back out until dawn. The next day the world was still the same, but I knew more about how big it could be.